Weight loss type 2 diabetes

Tom Hanks is now one of the estimated 25.8 million people in the U.S. who struggle with diabetes. In an interview on CBS's "Late Show with David Letterman," Hanks revealed that he has been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. The 57-year-old award-winning actor said he had been struggling with his blood sugar for more than two decades. Diabetes is a metabolic disease where the patient has high blood sugar because their pancreas cannot produce enough insulin (a hormone that regulates fat and metabolism in the body) or because the body cannot use the insulin in the system. Insulin is necessary to break down sugars found in food, called glucose, into energy. It is dangerous because the disease causes glucose to build up in the blood instead of being absorbed in the cells. This can zap a person's energy, and the high levels of glucose can cause eye, kidney, nerve or heart damage. Type 1 diabetes, which is when the body does not produce insulin, is something that a person is born with and … [Read more...] about CBS News Logo
Tom Hanks has Type 2 diabetes: How to curb risk for the disease

U.S. health regulators on Wednesday approved an AstraZeneca drug from a new class of medicines to treat Type 2 diabetes after previously rejecting it over safety concerns. The Food and Drug Administration's approval had been expected after an outside advisory panel of medical experts voted by a wide margin in December to recommend its approval, saying the benefits of the drug, dapagliflozin, outweighed its safety risks. It will be sold in the United States under the brand name Farxiga. The medicine was co-developed by Bristol-Myers Squibb Co and AstraZeneca. AstraZeneca late last year bought out Bristol's stake in their diabetes joint venture for more than $4 billion, including upfront and sales-related milestone payments. Farxiga, which has already been available in Europe, belongs to a class of diabetes drugs calledSGLT-2 inhibitors that work by blocking reabsorption of glucose by the kidney and increasing its excretion through urine to lower levels of blood sugar. It will compete … [Read more...] about CBS News Logo
FDA approves new Type 2 diabetes pill option

New research suggests another potential benefit for moms who breast-feed -- a lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes. The study found that breast-feeding for more than two months was linked to around a 50 percent reduction in the odds of developing type 2 diabetes for mothers who had already experienced gestational diabetes in the past. And the longer women breast-fed, the lower the odds of type 2 diabetes, the study said. "The main policy implication is that we need to focus our breast-feeding promotion efforts to high-risk women, those who are obese or have a pregnancy with gestational diabetes," said study author Erica Gunderson, a senior research scientist with Kaiser Permanente Northern California. However, this study did not show that breast-feeding caused a lower risk of type 2 diabetes; it only found an association between these factors. The results were published online Nov. 23 in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine. Gunderson's team followed more than 900 women two … [Read more...] about CBS News Logo
Breast-feeding may cut moms’ risk of type 2 diabetes

Obese people who get bariatric surgery are less likely to require medication to control diabetes symptoms afterward, compared to those who don’t get operations to lose weight, a French study suggests. Researchers examined data on 15,650 obese patients who had weight-loss surgery in France in 2009, including 1,633 people who were on medications to help control diabetes at the time. The surgery recipients were compared to an equal number of similar obese patients who were hospitalized that year but didn’t get bariatric surgery. Six years later, half of the people who started out on diabetes medication and got bariatric surgery were no longer taking these drugs, compared to 9 percent in the control group that didn’t have the surgery, researchers report in JAMA Surgery. “We can hypothesize that sustainable weight loss can protect patients from disease directly associated with morbid obesity such as type 2 diabetes, which is a serious chronic disease that has become … [Read more...] about More Evidence Weight-Loss Surgery Improves Diabetes Symptoms

Obese people who get bariatric surgery are less likely to require medication to control diabetes symptoms afterward, compared to those who don’t get operations to lose weight, a French study suggests. Researchers examined data on 15,650 obese patients who had weight-loss surgery in France in 2009, including 1,633 people who were on medications to help control diabetes at the time. The surgery recipients were compared to an equal number of similar obese patients who were hospitalized that year but didn’t get bariatric surgery. Six years later, half of the people who started out on diabetes medication and got bariatric surgery were no longer taking these drugs, compared to 9 percent in the control group that didn’t have the surgery, researchers report in JAMA Surgery. “We can hypothesize that sustainable weight loss can protect patients from disease directly associated with morbid obesity such as type 2 diabetes, which is a serious chronic disease that has become … [Read more...] about Weight Loss Surgery Improves Diabetes Symptoms